


walking far from home, it came like a call

by mollivanders



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-10
Updated: 2011-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The human in the corner moans softly and Elena pushes herself further away from it, watching.</p><p>It doesn't have long to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	walking far from home, it came like a call

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: walking far from home, it came like a call**  
>  Fandom: The Vampire Diaries  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Characters: Damon/Elena, past Stefan/Elena  
> Author's Note: For the [Winter Wonderland of Fic](http://mollivanders.livejournal.com/221316.html). Word Count - 1,470. The prompt was _a dark future!fic where Stefan is dead. Maybe where Damon & Elena each blame themselves (or each other) for his death_.  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. Title from [Iron and Wine's new song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06vA3Z42Vz8).

The human in the corner moans softly and Elena pushes herself further away from it, watching.

It doesn't have long to live.

The door slams open and Elena squints in the brief sunlight, Damon’s frame blocking most of it.

“Come on,” he says hoarsely, reaching for her hand and pulling her up. “We can’t stay here any longer.”

“But the human –” Elena begins before Damon shakes his head sharply, sparing a glance at the creature. “We have to do something!” she insists, pulling out of Damon’s grip and cautiously stepping toward the human. It wasn’t strong enough to hurt her but Elena knew better than to assume it was just a human. They weren’t the only monsters now.

It was a boy, barely fifteen by the looks of him, and memories buried deep washed over her. _Jeremy. Matt. Tyler._ He was pale and shaking from blood loss. How he had escaped from his captors, Elena didn’t want to know. They had found him here and they would leave him here; there was nothing else for it.

The sounds of a party were drifting closer, which meant they weren’t _that_ near but Damon and Elena didn’t have much time.

Elena’s usual questions are of no use to her as she crouches next to the boy, pushing his fringe out of his face. He shudders and pulls away from her and she supposes he knows there were very few of his kind left. It was a terrible mistake but they had failed to stop it (now they had to live with it).

They two and nobody else.

“It’s going to take a while for you to die like this,” Elena tells the boy softly and he swallows, horrified and mesmerized. “I could end it quickly.”

“I’d rather die,” the boy retorts hoarsely and Elena hears Damon’s aggravated sigh from the door, his quick steps across the room. Before she can stop him he’s snapped the boy’s neck.

“You tried,” Damon says kindly. “We may as well eat before we go.”

They spare five minutes to drink, not a drop of blood gone to waste in this desert.

 

It was Stefan who convinced her to go along with Damon’s plans; that and the scared look Damon tried to hide from everyone but which told Elena they didn’t have a shot in hell of making it through this alive by running.

So every night she showed up at the Salvatore house and let Damon feed her his stronger blood while Stefan watched, concerned and less skilled at hiding his fear than Damon was. Stefan didn’t want her to be a vampire; Elena knew that. Damon did.

It doesn’t stop her from trying to save herself.

She doesn’t remember much about it. Her last memory is of going to pick up ice cream for Jenna. Right after she got Jeremy’s frantic phone call to get out of Mystic Falls, something crashed her car.

The rest of the details are fuzzy.

(A stone dais. A long knife that digs into her stomach and makes her scream with more pain than she realized was possible. Blood, everywhere, and not all of it hers.)

Elena’s tried to forget the part where her friends came to save her but the best she can do is flip the switch, become as emotionless as Damon.

He’d done what he promised her, at least. He protected her. Watching Stefan go down seemed to be the last straw for Damon and instead of fighting anymore, trying to stop the Originals, he just grabbed Elena and they ran. Kept running.

It hadn’t stopped the curse from being lifted because technically Elena had died, her blood drained on an altar of weak beliefs and terrible magic. It had stopped Klaus from chasing after them.

The wolves weren’t so merciful.

 

Damon didn’t talk about Stefan and wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise. When she tried to bring him up, Damon would push her hand off his arm and crank the radio up to full blast, hurting both their ears but seeming to enjoy the pain.

Elena couldn’t say the same.

It’s a month of hiding in ditches, stealing cars and taking blood wherever they could find it before Damon finally mentions his name.

“It’s probably good he’s dead, Elena. You never saw him when he was fully off the bunny.”

They’re stealing food from an abandoned restaurant someone else lit on fire, kicking away charred tables and chairs as they rummage for anything edible. Elena’s stomach growls noisily.

“I saw him like that,” she defends. “And you don’t know how he would have done. We don’t only eat _them_ after all.”

(It’s a simple but effective defense mechanism Damon taught her after her first kill. Humans were not _us_ but _them_ and _it_ and _creatures_.

The rate they were dying off it would hardly matter what they were called in a few years.)

“We do, mostly,” Damon retorts. “And Stefan wouldn’t touch a bunny at all after he really got going. This is pretty horrible as it is. Stefan couldn’t have coped.”

Another defense mechanism, Elena decides.

 

By accident, they come back to Mystic Falls.

(No road signs, more dirt roads than anything else, highways overgrown with weeds.)

Elena doesn’t realize where they are until they drive past the high school and she slams the brakes, waking Damon in the passenger seat.

“Why’d you take us back here?” he asks angrily but Elena doesn’t answer, just jumps out of the truck and heads toward the main building. It’s blackened, fire-ravaged, and there’s a pillar of smoke coming from behind it so there’s still someone around. Vampires, or they wouldn’t be so careless about their location.

This is where it happened.

Damon’s at her side in an instant, still mad. “Elena, we’re not stopping here.” He tries to lead her back to the car but she shakes out of his grip and walks determinedly toward the cafeteria.

She wants to see if anyone’s missing (if there’s any hope), but she should have realized by now there would be nothing left.

The cafeteria looks like it’s been hit by a bomb and Elena releases a ragged breath, holding her arms against herself as she takes it all in. Blood, dirt, dust, cracked pieces of bone. It’s all here even if none of them are.

“Over there,” Damon says softly at her back and she doesn’t even jump, just meets his eyes and looks where he’s pointing. “That’s where I saw him die.”

He doesn’t seem to be able to breathe either, staring at the spot where his brother went down, and he’s wooden when she takes his hands, tries to refocus him.

“It’s okay,” she tries to reassure him, her throat closing. “It’s okay.”

(It’s the farthest thing from.)

She’s not surprised when Damon kisses her, burying his hands in her hair and pulling her up to him in this place of death. It almost doesn’t feel like he’s kissing her, like it’s an echo of how another man used to kiss her, but she leans into it, feeds the kiss and senses the dam breaking under her.

(They really can’t stay long.)

 

When they’re on the road again, the rear view mirror literally torn off before Damon would start driving, he’s the one to break the taboo on conversations about Stefan.

“Do you miss him?” he asks, glancing at her across the car, and Elena looks away from the window (from the fires, from the raucous parties, from the creatures they can’t save) and meets his eyes.

“All the time,” she tells him.

 _Was it worth it?_ lingers, begs to be asked. Whether Elena was worth dying for, killing for, ending the world for.

She can’t answer that.

“You know Caroline used to do this thing,” Damon says, interrupting the murky pool of questions they can’t handle. “It was like she was going to make me pay forever for what I did to her, and I could tell. She was going to do something crazy, something I would hate. And I wouldn’t know what. I could have stopped her, easy,” he says grinning. “But it was more fun to see what she would cook up.”

“Caroline was always like that,” Elena agrees, pulling her knees up to her chest and leaning her head on them to watch him drive. “When we were kids she would always find a way to mix things up, make them more interesting. Bonnie used to hate it.”

“Yeah, well, what didn’t Bonnie hate?” Damon jokes and Elena laughs dryly. There’s an answer to that question, one too raw to hear right now, but the mood remains.

(The scenery passes them unwatched.

The world’s already ended once; they’ve got nothing left to lose.)

_Finis_


End file.
